When I was a kid, I liked watching the ice skating…back when it was more artistic than athletic. The gymnastics were kind of cool too.
But as an adult, I really look forward to when the Paralympics come on so I can watch the wheelchair rugby and basketball games.
Those guys that play wheelchair rugby and insane! Their chairs are like little tanks and they don’t mind ramming into each other. Sometimes they fall over but amazingly they avoid any injuries. They score pretty quickly too and the scores can get really high. I would love to watch one of those games in person; I bet it would be wild!
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I grew up watching football and baseball with my Dad, so I don’t know much about the rules of basketball; but watching the guys…and girls… play wheelchair basketball is crazy. They use mostly normal manual wheelchairs but they can do a lot of beating and banging too.
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The IOC – International Olympic Committee – should add baseball to the Paralympics, that would be really cool. There is a disabled veterans group that plays baseball. My Dad knew a guy who had polio as a child and he played Little League baseball – he was the pitcher and he sat on the mound to throw the ball. That would be pretty wicked to watch a ball coming at you from someone sitting on the mound!
They make baseballs that beep too, so the blind folks can play.
In winter, the Paralympics have sled hockey, the players sit on little sleds and use their hockey sticks to move up and down the ice. That’s another game I don’t really understand, but it is fun to watch the players on the ice.
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This year in Paris, there are a few new events including Breaking. That should be really cool to watch the dancers perform.
It’s getting harder to watch and enjoy some of the Olympic…and Paralympic….events on the television because of all the talking heads continually blabbing about everything but the event and what seems like more commercials than actual events. And then there are the segments where the TV people want to see how many event recaps they can do in less than five minutes. You really can’t see anything or really know what is going on.